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In the Labyrinth
The Battle of Reichenfels has been fought and lost. The army is in flight. The enemy is expected to arrive in town at any moment. Wandering through the snow laden devastated streets of what once was a city, a soldier on the losing side has a parcel to deliver. All the streets look the same, and he cannot remember the name of the street where he was to meet the man who had agreed to take the parcel. But he must deliver the parcel or at least get rid of it.
Alain Robbe-Grillet says in his prefatory note: "this story is fiction, not a report. It describes a reality which is not necessarily that of the reader's own experience. And yet the reality here in question is strictly physical, that is to say it has no allegorical significance. The reader should therefore see in it only objects, the gestures, the words and the events that are told, without seeking to give them either more or less meaning than they would have in his own life, or in his death."
The masterful translation is by Christine Brooke-Rose.
Alain Robbe-Grillet says in his prefatory note: "this story is fiction, not a report. It describes a reality which is not necessarily that of the reader's own experience. And yet the reality here in question is strictly physical, that is to say it has no allegorical significance. The reader should therefore see in it only objects, the gestures, the words and the events that are told, without seeking to give them either more or less meaning than they would have in his own life, or in his death."
The masterful translation is by Christine Brooke-Rose.
188 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1959
19 people are currently reading
1167 people want to read
About the author
Alain Robbe-Grillet
102 books432 followersScreenplays and novels, such as
The Erasers
(1953), of French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, affiliated with the New Wave movement in cinema, subordinate plot to the treatment of space and time; directors, such as Jean Luc Godard and François Truffaut, led this movement, which in the 1960s abandoned traditional narrative techniques in favor of greater use of symbolism and abstraction and dealt with themes of social alienation, psychopathology, and sexual love.
Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.
He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet (née Rstakian) .
Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest (Finistère, France) into a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer. In the years 1943-44 Robbe-Grillet participated in service du travail obligatoire in Nuremberg where he worked as a machinist. The initial few months were seen by Robbe-Grillet as something of a holiday, since in between the very rudimentary training he was given to operate the machinery he had free time to go to the theatre and the opera. In 1945, Robbe-Grillet completed his diploma at the National Institute of Agronomy. Later, his work as an agronomist took him to Martinique, French Guinea,Guadeloupe and Morocco.
His first novel The Erasers (Les Gommes) was published in 1953, after which he dedicated himself full-time to his new occupation. His early work was praised by eminent critics such as Roland Barthes and Maurice Blanchot. Around the time of his second novel he became a literary advisor for Les Editions de Minuit and occupied this position from 1955 until 1985. After publishing four novels, in 1961 he worked with Alain Renais, writing the script for Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad), and subsequently wrote and directed his own films. In 1963, Robbe-Grillet published For a New Novel (Pour un Nouveau Roman), a collection of previous published theoretical writings concerning the novel. From 1966 to 1968 he was a member of the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of French (Haut comité pour la défense et l´expansion de la langue française). In addition Robbe-Grillet also led the Centre for Sociology of Literature (Centre de sociologie de la littérature) at the university of Bruxelles from 1980 to 1988. From 1971 to 1995 Robbe-Grillet was a professor at New York University, lecturing on his own novels.
In 2004 Robbe-Grillet was elected to the Académie française, but was never actually formally received by the Académie because of disputes regarding the Académie's reception procedures. Robbe-Grillet both refused to prepare and submit a welcome speech in advance, preferring to improvise his speech, as well as refusing to purchase and wear the Académie's famous green tails (habit vert) and sabre, which he considered as out-dated.
He died in Caen after succumbing to heart problems
Style
His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead, one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured and the resulting novel resembles the literary
Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon one of the figures most associated with the trend of the Nouveau Roman. Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat #32.
He was married to Catherine Robbe-Grillet (née Rstakian) .
Alain Robbe-Grillet was born in Brest (Finistère, France) into a family of engineers and scientists. He was trained as an agricultural engineer. In the years 1943-44 Robbe-Grillet participated in service du travail obligatoire in Nuremberg where he worked as a machinist. The initial few months were seen by Robbe-Grillet as something of a holiday, since in between the very rudimentary training he was given to operate the machinery he had free time to go to the theatre and the opera. In 1945, Robbe-Grillet completed his diploma at the National Institute of Agronomy. Later, his work as an agronomist took him to Martinique, French Guinea,Guadeloupe and Morocco.
His first novel The Erasers (Les Gommes) was published in 1953, after which he dedicated himself full-time to his new occupation. His early work was praised by eminent critics such as Roland Barthes and Maurice Blanchot. Around the time of his second novel he became a literary advisor for Les Editions de Minuit and occupied this position from 1955 until 1985. After publishing four novels, in 1961 he worked with Alain Renais, writing the script for Last Year at Marienbad (L'Année Dernière à Marienbad), and subsequently wrote and directed his own films. In 1963, Robbe-Grillet published For a New Novel (Pour un Nouveau Roman), a collection of previous published theoretical writings concerning the novel. From 1966 to 1968 he was a member of the High Committee for the Defense and Expansion of French (Haut comité pour la défense et l´expansion de la langue française). In addition Robbe-Grillet also led the Centre for Sociology of Literature (Centre de sociologie de la littérature) at the university of Bruxelles from 1980 to 1988. From 1971 to 1995 Robbe-Grillet was a professor at New York University, lecturing on his own novels.
In 2004 Robbe-Grillet was elected to the Académie française, but was never actually formally received by the Académie because of disputes regarding the Académie's reception procedures. Robbe-Grillet both refused to prepare and submit a welcome speech in advance, preferring to improvise his speech, as well as refusing to purchase and wear the Académie's famous green tails (habit vert) and sabre, which he considered as out-dated.
He died in Caen after succumbing to heart problems
Style
His writing style has been described as "realist" or "phenomenological" (in the Heideggerian sense) or "a theory of pure surface." Methodical, geometric, and often repetitive descriptions of objects replace the psychology and interiority of the character. Instead, one slowly pieces together the story and the emotional experience of jealousy in the repetition of descriptions, the attention to odd details, and the breaks in repetitions. Ironically, this method resembles the experience of psychoanalysis in which the deeper unconscious meanings are contained in the flow and disruptions of free associations. Timelines and plots are fractured and the resulting novel resembles the literary
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May 1, 2024
No time… In the Labyrinth there is no time… Or all times are one time…
Things… Images… Existence consists of contemplating things and images… A soldier and a boy… Everything is so static… They are lost in the labyrinth of streets… Are they real? Are they imagined?
Everything is uncertain… Dreamlike… Characters appear and disappear… Events bifurcate and multiply… Everything goes in cycles… Labyrinths of time and space… Mazes of reverie…
In delirium everything happens simultaneously and there’s no time.
I am alone here now, under cover. Outside it is raining, outside you walk through the rain with your head down, shielding your eyes with one hand while you stare ahead nevertheless, a few yards ahead, at a few yards of wet asphalt; outside it is cold, the wind blows between the bare black branches; the wind blows through the leaves, rocking whole boughs, rocking them, rocking, their shadows swaying across the white roughcast walls. Outside the sun is shining, there is no tree, no bush to cast a shadow, and you walk under the sun shielding your eyes with one hand while you stare ahead, only a few yards in front of you, at a few yards of dusty asphalt where the wind makes patterns of parallel lines, forks, and spirals.
Things… Images… Existence consists of contemplating things and images… A soldier and a boy… Everything is so static… They are lost in the labyrinth of streets… Are they real? Are they imagined?
The soldier continues to stare down the street.
When he finally turns to look at the boy, the latter has completely disappeared.
Everything is uncertain… Dreamlike… Characters appear and disappear… Events bifurcate and multiply… Everything goes in cycles… Labyrinths of time and space… Mazes of reverie…
The soldier thinks he has definitely lost the track when he sees the boy waiting for him a few feet away, under a street light, huddled in his black cape already white with snow.
“Here it is,” he says, pointing to a door just like the others.
In delirium everything happens simultaneously and there’s no time.
February 26, 2017
این کتاب هیچ ربطی به فیلم ایرانی "ماهی و گربه" ندارد ولی سبک هردویشان با اینکه یکی فیلم و دیگری کتابی نوشته شده در سال 1959 میلادیست , یکسان میباشد (مفهوم تکرار زمانی در هردویشان به چشم میخورد) , کتاب "در هزار تو" قصد ندارد داستان مشخصی را تعریف کند , بلکه دارد یک شخصیت را در زمان های مختلف پس و پیش میکند و شیوه ی نوینی از رمان نویسی را به ما معرفی کند که نمونه اش را نخوانده بودم و برایم از این نظر خاص و جدید بود , اما از نظر سبک مورد علاقه ی شخصیم خب سبک داستانی را بیشتر دوست دارم و به طبع جذب داستانش نشدم (کلا به نظرم داستانی در کار نبود !) , هرچند کتاب را با عشق لذت بردن از توصیفات دقیق و پیچیده ی نویسنده و سبک جدیدش ادامه میدادم و با خودم تکرار میکردم که نویسنده نابغه بوده و چه حوصله ای داشته که محیط و زمان و مکان ها را اینقدر خوب و عالی و قابل تصور و تخیل مو به مو نوشته و مطمئنم که عاشقان رمان هایی که فضا سازی را در نوشته ها را دوست دارند , صد در صد بعد خواندنش حیرت زده و خرسند میشوند ... سبک نوین رمان واقعا برایم تحسین برانگیز بود درست همانقدر که بار اول فیلم ماهی و گربه را دیده بودم و همه میگفتند داستانش بد بود و خوب پرداخته نشده بود , اما من شیفته ی سبک نوینش شده بودم و در این کتاب هم شده ام ... اگر به دنبال سبکی جدید هستید و مثل این نمونه را نخوانده اید , به نظر من ارزش وقت گذاشتن را دارد...
December 16, 2024
'Adventures' of the Anonymous Soldier in the Labyrinth
It was quite challenging to read this experimental novel because the author tortures you with the numerous seemingly unnecessary detailed and precise descriptions of the streets, buildings, rooms and things in the rooms. It seems he focuses on the setting much more than on his nameless and rather unemotional characters who speak and act as if they live in a dream...
On the other hand, this text hypnotises you, makes you constantly wonder about the people trapped in this war-torn city. No matter where the protagonist goes, he cannot leave the street, building, cafe, apartment he has just been to. Constant travelling in this surreal labyrinth reflects this feeling of fear, dislocation and uncertainty experienced by the inhabitants of the country whose army has been defeated and whose territory is being occupied.
It was quite challenging to read this experimental novel because the author tortures you with the numerous seemingly unnecessary detailed and precise descriptions of the streets, buildings, rooms and things in the rooms. It seems he focuses on the setting much more than on his nameless and rather unemotional characters who speak and act as if they live in a dream...
On the other hand, this text hypnotises you, makes you constantly wonder about the people trapped in this war-torn city. No matter where the protagonist goes, he cannot leave the street, building, cafe, apartment he has just been to. Constant travelling in this surreal labyrinth reflects this feeling of fear, dislocation and uncertainty experienced by the inhabitants of the country whose army has been defeated and whose territory is being occupied.
February 10, 2015
"Then there is the electric bulb swaying at the end of the long wire and the man's shadow swaying across the closed door like a slow metronome."
The man walks out of the house, shutting and locking the door behind him. He steps down the three stairs to the sidewalk, first his right foot, then his left foot and then his right foot again. The serpentine of concrete takes him to the wide, gray expanse of the driveway. He is carrying a travel coffee mug, blue with London emblazoned in script on the side, in his left hand, and a truck key in his right hand. He is wearing green chinos with a black ribbed polo shirt. He checks a wristwatch with a blue face. He stops at the end of the drive waiting for a black SUV to pass before advancing, four quick steps, to the door of the company pickup. The man pulls a key from his pocket and inserts it into the lock. He pulls the door open and with a little hop slides his 6’4” frame into the pickup seat. He buckles his seatbelt. He puts the key into the ignition and twists the key igniting the engine. He puts his right foot on the brake. He then reaches up and moves the gear lever to the D position. He rests both hands on the steering wheel at the regulation 2 and 10 o’clock positions. The pickup, with a nudge of his foot on the accelerator, moves forward. He drives to the end of the block.
He moves his head to the left to check for traffic and then to the right and then again to the left. He takes his foot off the brake and enters traffic. He pulls the truck steering wheel to the right and then back to the left. He pulls into the left hand turning lane and stops behind a white Chevrolet car. He uses his left hand to turn on the turning signal. He waits, gives a cursory look over at the young dark haired woman in the sedan next to him. She is wearing smoky sunglasses even though the lighting is still very dim. She looks over at him and her lips part in a partial smile. He smiles back at her. He turns his attention back to the light. The arrow is green. He moves his right foot from the brake to the accelerator. His hands turn the steering wheel to the left and the truck moves into the lane heading East. He drives about 400 yards. The light at Central stays green and he moves through the intersection. He watches a small gray Toyota who is creeping up to turn right. The car stops. He turns his attention back to the road.
He drives till he comes to P Avenue. He removes his left hand from the wheel and moves the turn signal up with his fingers indicating a right hand turn. He places his hand back on the steering wheel and shifts the wheel slightly to the right moving the truck into the turning lane. He takes his foot off the accelerator and pushes down on the brake enough to slow his forward momentum. He turns the steering wheel to the right and then straightens the wheel so the truck is going due South. He takes his foot off the brake and puts it back on the accelerator. He turns his head to the right and looks at the pine trees that have been recently planted around a home next to the road. He turns his attention back to the road. He drives until he comes to the stop sign at Comanche St. He takes his foot off the accelerator and applies pressure to the brake until the truck comes to a complete stop. He turns his head to look at the fire truck stopped to his left. He waits for the fire truck to pass through the intersection. His head follows the red shape as it moves past his line of sight. He takes his foot off the brake and applies it to the accelerator. He moves through the intersection.
He drives another mile. He notices the 35 MPH sign and looks down at his speedometer. He looks back up at the road. When he reaches the entrance to High Plains Journal he moves his foot from the accelerator to the brake. The trees on the front lawn are dark huddled masses. He turns the steering wheel to the left and goes up the driveway. The lower parking lot is empty. He sees the white SUV of the publisher parked up in the upper parking lot. He moves the steering wheel to the left and glides into his designated parking spot. He applies the brake and moves the gear lever to P. He turns the key, which stops the engine and then slides the key from the ignition. He unbuckles his seat belt. He puts his left hand on the lever that opens the door and moves it 45 degrees toward himself. The door opens. He steps down first with his left foot, then slides off the seat planting his right foot on the ground. He reaches back to retrieve the coffee cup. He depresses the lock on the truck door and shuts the door. He walks ten paces to the door. Leaves are blown around his feet. The boom of coupling railroad cars startles him. He looks South in the direction of the sound, pauses for a moment. He turns his attention back to the door. He reaches into his pocket and pulls a set of brass and silver keys from his pocket. He flips them around on his fingers until he finds the one for the door. He slides the key into the lock and twists it to the left until he hears the click of the locking mechanism releasing. He puts the keys back in his pocket and reaches out with that same right hand to pull the door open. He steps through walks two paces to the inner door. He grabs the handle with his right hand and pulls it hard enough to part the magnets holding the door closed. He steps through. The fluorescent lights over the orange and yellow cloth covered cubicles are already on. The lights show everything in stark relief chasing shadows to only the deepest crevices.
He sees the office manager, a position that once was referred to as secretary, sitting in front of her computer. She turns to glance at him removing her brown framed reading glasses from her face with her right hand. She reveals blue eyes. She has short feathered blond hair. She is wearing a blue button down shirt and darker blue corduroy pants. The blue of her outfit is bisected by a brown belt with a silver buckle. A swath of skin reveals just a hint of cleavage and the large dark brown mole on her neck peaks around the edge of the collar.
“I have a missing order from the Iowa State Fair.” She says. He notices, not for the first time, that her teeth have the rust stain of kids that drank well water growing up.
“I’ll call the guys and have them pull their tickets.”
She turns back to her computer, putting her glasses back on her face. He turns to his office door. He pulls the keys from his pocket and sifts through the keys until he finds the antique brass colored one. He slides it into the lock and turns the key. He steps into his office closing the door behind him. He reaches over with his right hand and turns on the four 10’ long tubes of fluorescent lights in his office. He walks around his desk and pulls a black chair from where it has been nestled against the desk. He puts his keys on the desk next to the printer and his coffee next to his keys. The glowing green LCDs of his adding machine sets to the right of the printer. Both machines are gray, but mismatching gray.
He sits in the chair and leans back in the webbing of the back support. He glances at the picture on his desk of his wife and he at a friend’s wedding. He is wearing a tux that had been required to be best man. The frame is made of slate. He looks younger in the picture and has a moustache. He touches the smooth skin over his lip. There is an faded, tan phone with green and red buttons sitting to his left, the phone cord twisted in a Gordian Knot. He presses the on switch to the laptop with his right index finger. While the computer is booting up he looks over at the other picture on his desk of his two kids sitting on a bridge; they are older now. An inbox tray littered with white sheets of paper sets behind the computer. A silver tin of paperclips rests in the shadow of two scowling dragons holding a miniature sword used as a letter opener. A brass tin business card holder sets to the left of the dragons with JDK embossed on the back cover. It holds business cards with the name Jeffrey D. Keeten. Ink pens are scattered on his desk a blue one, a purple one, a white one with a green top and papers with columns of numbers marred by squiggles of handwriting.
The walls of the office are white. He has a picture of Golden Gate Bridge over the window facing into the building. If he shifts to his right and leans over a little bit he can see the helmet of blond hair of the office manager. He can see her jaw line and the edge of her glasses. The rest of her is hidden by the flaring edge of a filing cabinet. Over the door hangs a black and white picture of a young Jack Kennedy. To the right of the interior window is a picture of The Thinker that he bought at the Musee Rodin in Paris. Directly in front of him is a picture of the original dust cover of The Great Gatsby. To the left of that is a cartoon picture of Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia that he purchased on a trip to Barcelona. To the left of the Gaudi is a watercolor of the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. Below them rests two gray speckled office chairs for visitors to sit in.
On the wall to the right of the window overlooking the lawn and Wyatt Earp Blvd is a diploma from the University of Arizona for a Bachelor of Arts. Over the window is a photo of a panoramic view of the Grand Canyon. The blinds over the window are brown wicker, folding Roman style when raised or lowered. The window ledge is dusty, the crispy body of a dead fly hangs in the ragged remains of a spider web. To the left of the window is a three foot slender picture of the Eiffel Tower. On the wall behind him is a Van Gogh of the wheat fields. Below that is a portrait that an artist friend sketched of his face. To right of the sketch, half obscured by a pile of books on a long gray file cabinet, is a signed photo of the baseball player George Brett. Two more black filing cabinets butt up against the long gray filing cabinet.
He uses his fingers to tap the keys to enter his security code into the computer. He reaches out with his left hand and grasps the handle of the sword letter opener and plunges it into his throat. The pain is intense more than he could have imagined. He pulls the letter opener from his neck with shaking hands and lays it next to his phone. Blood gushes out on his keyboard and splashes the phone and the silver tin of paperclips. He falls forward. His cheek is on the keyboard and he can feel the heat of the computer circuitry on his skin and the whirl of the fan makes a soft echo in his ear as he...dies.
I had to kill myself. I couldn’t take it anymore.
This is a mind numbing way to write. Very difficult actually to strain out all speculative thoughts by the protagonist, only writing what he can see, and eliminating emotional responses. Recording everything one does and the way we do it was interesting because I hadn't really thought about how many motions are necessary just to get me the six miles from my house to my office.
An arm remains half raised, a mouth gapes, a head is tipped back; but tension has replaced movement, the features are contorted, the limbs stiffened, the smile has become a grimace, the impulse has lost its intention and its meaning, There no longer remains, in their place, anything but excess, and strangenness, and death."
The descriptions in this novel of mundane things add to the obscurity of the story. It seems to be a simple plot of a soldier in a city on a mission to deliver a package to a street that he has forgotten the name of, still one would think the inhabitants could set him on a proper course. From a creepy little boy that shadows him, leads him, abandons him to a series of women and soldiers who offer him directions and advice that lead him nowhere. While on his quest he is shot by soldiers on a motorcycle. The soldier finds himself back at the beginning lying on a bed staring at surroundings he has already seen, disoriented by not remembering the exact color of the drapes because he doesn’t normally have faults in his memory. There is certainly a Kafkaesque feel to the novel reinforced by a sense that their are too many obstacles to fulfill this simple obligation.
I actually liked Jealousy better, so I would suggest reading that story if you want a taste of the style of Alain Robbe-Grillet.
The man walks out of the house, shutting and locking the door behind him. He steps down the three stairs to the sidewalk, first his right foot, then his left foot and then his right foot again. The serpentine of concrete takes him to the wide, gray expanse of the driveway. He is carrying a travel coffee mug, blue with London emblazoned in script on the side, in his left hand, and a truck key in his right hand. He is wearing green chinos with a black ribbed polo shirt. He checks a wristwatch with a blue face. He stops at the end of the drive waiting for a black SUV to pass before advancing, four quick steps, to the door of the company pickup. The man pulls a key from his pocket and inserts it into the lock. He pulls the door open and with a little hop slides his 6’4” frame into the pickup seat. He buckles his seatbelt. He puts the key into the ignition and twists the key igniting the engine. He puts his right foot on the brake. He then reaches up and moves the gear lever to the D position. He rests both hands on the steering wheel at the regulation 2 and 10 o’clock positions. The pickup, with a nudge of his foot on the accelerator, moves forward. He drives to the end of the block.
He moves his head to the left to check for traffic and then to the right and then again to the left. He takes his foot off the brake and enters traffic. He pulls the truck steering wheel to the right and then back to the left. He pulls into the left hand turning lane and stops behind a white Chevrolet car. He uses his left hand to turn on the turning signal. He waits, gives a cursory look over at the young dark haired woman in the sedan next to him. She is wearing smoky sunglasses even though the lighting is still very dim. She looks over at him and her lips part in a partial smile. He smiles back at her. He turns his attention back to the light. The arrow is green. He moves his right foot from the brake to the accelerator. His hands turn the steering wheel to the left and the truck moves into the lane heading East. He drives about 400 yards. The light at Central stays green and he moves through the intersection. He watches a small gray Toyota who is creeping up to turn right. The car stops. He turns his attention back to the road.
He drives till he comes to P Avenue. He removes his left hand from the wheel and moves the turn signal up with his fingers indicating a right hand turn. He places his hand back on the steering wheel and shifts the wheel slightly to the right moving the truck into the turning lane. He takes his foot off the accelerator and pushes down on the brake enough to slow his forward momentum. He turns the steering wheel to the right and then straightens the wheel so the truck is going due South. He takes his foot off the brake and puts it back on the accelerator. He turns his head to the right and looks at the pine trees that have been recently planted around a home next to the road. He turns his attention back to the road. He drives until he comes to the stop sign at Comanche St. He takes his foot off the accelerator and applies pressure to the brake until the truck comes to a complete stop. He turns his head to look at the fire truck stopped to his left. He waits for the fire truck to pass through the intersection. His head follows the red shape as it moves past his line of sight. He takes his foot off the brake and applies it to the accelerator. He moves through the intersection.
He drives another mile. He notices the 35 MPH sign and looks down at his speedometer. He looks back up at the road. When he reaches the entrance to High Plains Journal he moves his foot from the accelerator to the brake. The trees on the front lawn are dark huddled masses. He turns the steering wheel to the left and goes up the driveway. The lower parking lot is empty. He sees the white SUV of the publisher parked up in the upper parking lot. He moves the steering wheel to the left and glides into his designated parking spot. He applies the brake and moves the gear lever to P. He turns the key, which stops the engine and then slides the key from the ignition. He unbuckles his seat belt. He puts his left hand on the lever that opens the door and moves it 45 degrees toward himself. The door opens. He steps down first with his left foot, then slides off the seat planting his right foot on the ground. He reaches back to retrieve the coffee cup. He depresses the lock on the truck door and shuts the door. He walks ten paces to the door. Leaves are blown around his feet. The boom of coupling railroad cars startles him. He looks South in the direction of the sound, pauses for a moment. He turns his attention back to the door. He reaches into his pocket and pulls a set of brass and silver keys from his pocket. He flips them around on his fingers until he finds the one for the door. He slides the key into the lock and twists it to the left until he hears the click of the locking mechanism releasing. He puts the keys back in his pocket and reaches out with that same right hand to pull the door open. He steps through walks two paces to the inner door. He grabs the handle with his right hand and pulls it hard enough to part the magnets holding the door closed. He steps through. The fluorescent lights over the orange and yellow cloth covered cubicles are already on. The lights show everything in stark relief chasing shadows to only the deepest crevices.
He sees the office manager, a position that once was referred to as secretary, sitting in front of her computer. She turns to glance at him removing her brown framed reading glasses from her face with her right hand. She reveals blue eyes. She has short feathered blond hair. She is wearing a blue button down shirt and darker blue corduroy pants. The blue of her outfit is bisected by a brown belt with a silver buckle. A swath of skin reveals just a hint of cleavage and the large dark brown mole on her neck peaks around the edge of the collar.
“I have a missing order from the Iowa State Fair.” She says. He notices, not for the first time, that her teeth have the rust stain of kids that drank well water growing up.
“I’ll call the guys and have them pull their tickets.”
She turns back to her computer, putting her glasses back on her face. He turns to his office door. He pulls the keys from his pocket and sifts through the keys until he finds the antique brass colored one. He slides it into the lock and turns the key. He steps into his office closing the door behind him. He reaches over with his right hand and turns on the four 10’ long tubes of fluorescent lights in his office. He walks around his desk and pulls a black chair from where it has been nestled against the desk. He puts his keys on the desk next to the printer and his coffee next to his keys. The glowing green LCDs of his adding machine sets to the right of the printer. Both machines are gray, but mismatching gray.
He sits in the chair and leans back in the webbing of the back support. He glances at the picture on his desk of his wife and he at a friend’s wedding. He is wearing a tux that had been required to be best man. The frame is made of slate. He looks younger in the picture and has a moustache. He touches the smooth skin over his lip. There is an faded, tan phone with green and red buttons sitting to his left, the phone cord twisted in a Gordian Knot. He presses the on switch to the laptop with his right index finger. While the computer is booting up he looks over at the other picture on his desk of his two kids sitting on a bridge; they are older now. An inbox tray littered with white sheets of paper sets behind the computer. A silver tin of paperclips rests in the shadow of two scowling dragons holding a miniature sword used as a letter opener. A brass tin business card holder sets to the left of the dragons with JDK embossed on the back cover. It holds business cards with the name Jeffrey D. Keeten. Ink pens are scattered on his desk a blue one, a purple one, a white one with a green top and papers with columns of numbers marred by squiggles of handwriting.
The walls of the office are white. He has a picture of Golden Gate Bridge over the window facing into the building. If he shifts to his right and leans over a little bit he can see the helmet of blond hair of the office manager. He can see her jaw line and the edge of her glasses. The rest of her is hidden by the flaring edge of a filing cabinet. Over the door hangs a black and white picture of a young Jack Kennedy. To the right of the interior window is a picture of The Thinker that he bought at the Musee Rodin in Paris. Directly in front of him is a picture of the original dust cover of The Great Gatsby. To the left of that is a cartoon picture of Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia that he purchased on a trip to Barcelona. To the left of the Gaudi is a watercolor of the St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans. Below them rests two gray speckled office chairs for visitors to sit in.
On the wall to the right of the window overlooking the lawn and Wyatt Earp Blvd is a diploma from the University of Arizona for a Bachelor of Arts. Over the window is a photo of a panoramic view of the Grand Canyon. The blinds over the window are brown wicker, folding Roman style when raised or lowered. The window ledge is dusty, the crispy body of a dead fly hangs in the ragged remains of a spider web. To the left of the window is a three foot slender picture of the Eiffel Tower. On the wall behind him is a Van Gogh of the wheat fields. Below that is a portrait that an artist friend sketched of his face. To right of the sketch, half obscured by a pile of books on a long gray file cabinet, is a signed photo of the baseball player George Brett. Two more black filing cabinets butt up against the long gray filing cabinet.
He uses his fingers to tap the keys to enter his security code into the computer. He reaches out with his left hand and grasps the handle of the sword letter opener and plunges it into his throat. The pain is intense more than he could have imagined. He pulls the letter opener from his neck with shaking hands and lays it next to his phone. Blood gushes out on his keyboard and splashes the phone and the silver tin of paperclips. He falls forward. His cheek is on the keyboard and he can feel the heat of the computer circuitry on his skin and the whirl of the fan makes a soft echo in his ear as he...dies.
I had to kill myself. I couldn’t take it anymore.
This is a mind numbing way to write. Very difficult actually to strain out all speculative thoughts by the protagonist, only writing what he can see, and eliminating emotional responses. Recording everything one does and the way we do it was interesting because I hadn't really thought about how many motions are necessary just to get me the six miles from my house to my office.
An arm remains half raised, a mouth gapes, a head is tipped back; but tension has replaced movement, the features are contorted, the limbs stiffened, the smile has become a grimace, the impulse has lost its intention and its meaning, There no longer remains, in their place, anything but excess, and strangenness, and death."
The descriptions in this novel of mundane things add to the obscurity of the story. It seems to be a simple plot of a soldier in a city on a mission to deliver a package to a street that he has forgotten the name of, still one would think the inhabitants could set him on a proper course. From a creepy little boy that shadows him, leads him, abandons him to a series of women and soldiers who offer him directions and advice that lead him nowhere. While on his quest he is shot by soldiers on a motorcycle. The soldier finds himself back at the beginning lying on a bed staring at surroundings he has already seen, disoriented by not remembering the exact color of the drapes because he doesn’t normally have faults in his memory. There is certainly a Kafkaesque feel to the novel reinforced by a sense that their are too many obstacles to fulfill this simple obligation.
I actually liked Jealousy better, so I would suggest reading that story if you want a taste of the style of Alain Robbe-Grillet.
September 22, 2025
if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com
230419: read four times in translation Jealousy & In the Labyrinth so i knew what i was getting here. first time read in french, great for improving my vocabulary, particularly of nouns, as there is much repetition, much context, much exact or similar phrases. verbs all in present-tense, dialogue repetitive, evocative, dream-like, plot, description, physical movement, details of streets, cafe, stairways, hallways, lamps, street lamps, shadows, clothes, falling snow, gathering dust, gestures... all again and again, not much confusion of poetic or historic or literary expression. the early passages i love in translations... i love in original. fast read, sort of, because repetition builds rhythm. and i very much love this work...
maybe i would like to write this review in french that is not very good, spelling terrible, but if you are french or interested in french avant-garde literature, you probably know or think you know what early robbe-grillet reads like. and you love it or you hate it. so this review is for anglos who want to practice/read french and are tired of reading the usual L'Étranger or Le Petit Prince or... whatever. yes this is like nothing you have read, or i have read, in english. or translations from other languages. or probably other authors in french... i have previously reviewed this work in translation, in the grove book with Jealousy & In the Labyrinth‘jealousy’, but again this is my first read in french. i decide to read robbe-grillet’s other novels and maybe cine-novels in order of writing, though the u library only starts with Les Gommes and ends i think with Repetition... oh well. i may know my next 11 books...
more:
by-
Jealousy & In the Labyrinth
The Erasers
Last Year at Marienbad
Voyeur
La Maison de rendez-vous
Project for a Revolution in New York
La Belle Captive
Topology of a Phantom City
Recollections of the Golden Triangle
The Immortal One
Djinn
Repetition
A Regicide
A Sentimental Novel
francaise-
La Jalousie
Dans le labyrinthe
Les Gommes
L'année dernière à Marienbad
Instantanés
on-
For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction
Generative Literature and Generative Art: New Essays
Alain Robbe-Grillet: The Body of the Text
The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films
Inventing The Real World: The Art of Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
230419: read four times in translation Jealousy & In the Labyrinth so i knew what i was getting here. first time read in french, great for improving my vocabulary, particularly of nouns, as there is much repetition, much context, much exact or similar phrases. verbs all in present-tense, dialogue repetitive, evocative, dream-like, plot, description, physical movement, details of streets, cafe, stairways, hallways, lamps, street lamps, shadows, clothes, falling snow, gathering dust, gestures... all again and again, not much confusion of poetic or historic or literary expression. the early passages i love in translations... i love in original. fast read, sort of, because repetition builds rhythm. and i very much love this work...
maybe i would like to write this review in french that is not very good, spelling terrible, but if you are french or interested in french avant-garde literature, you probably know or think you know what early robbe-grillet reads like. and you love it or you hate it. so this review is for anglos who want to practice/read french and are tired of reading the usual L'Étranger or Le Petit Prince or... whatever. yes this is like nothing you have read, or i have read, in english. or translations from other languages. or probably other authors in french... i have previously reviewed this work in translation, in the grove book with Jealousy & In the Labyrinth‘jealousy’, but again this is my first read in french. i decide to read robbe-grillet’s other novels and maybe cine-novels in order of writing, though the u library only starts with Les Gommes and ends i think with Repetition... oh well. i may know my next 11 books...
more:
by-
Jealousy & In the Labyrinth
The Erasers
Last Year at Marienbad
Voyeur
La Maison de rendez-vous
Project for a Revolution in New York
La Belle Captive
Topology of a Phantom City
Recollections of the Golden Triangle
The Immortal One
Djinn
Repetition
A Regicide
A Sentimental Novel
francaise-
La Jalousie
Dans le labyrinthe
Les Gommes
L'année dernière à Marienbad
Instantanés
on-
For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction
Generative Literature and Generative Art: New Essays
Alain Robbe-Grillet: The Body of the Text
The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films
Inventing The Real World: The Art of Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
September 29, 2013
Excellent translation; close attention and flawless (as the Observer observed) rendering of Robbe-Grillet's aesthetics and aims: Poundian repetition, the leitmotif of a labyrinth depicted in the glance of the camera and the selected metaphors, surreal landscapes in sepia tones (colours used are mostly associated with uniforms) creating a dream sense, the development of the speakerless (no omniscient author intrusion) narrative (here not perfectly realised, but evident as intent) via the paradoxical use of present tenses (the I-narrator appears only at the beginning and end of the book), the disorientation of the reader and the precision of detail (the latter eventually gobbling patience).
February 28, 2012
The best way I can describe In The Labyrinth is by saying that reading it is like trying to read a Klein bottle. Or an Escher drawing. And that's both good and bad in every way you'd expect it to be.
It takes a good long time to figure out precisely what's going on (not that you can ever be exactly sure) and the prose (or the translation) is uninspiring. There's a lot of what seems like unnecessary description of physical objects and locations, to the exclusion of descriptions of, say, the main character. Nobody has names; physical descriptions, such as they are, seem meant to confuse. The plot consists of a soldier with a package to deliver (from whom? he doesn't know. To whom? He doesn't know. Containing what? He doesn't know.), who forgets the name of the street he's supposed to meet the recipient on. Every intersection looks the same to him. He does occasionally meet people, who rarely tell him anything useful, which raises the question: does nobody in this city have a map he could look at?
But all these annoying things pretty much have to be present for the novel to work, which it does (probably better than I'm implying here; it's just not really my thing). Those same irritating descriptions of physical objects pile up to create a tone one could describe as "proto-Lynchian," if one were so inclined. There are heavy red curtains, everything's dusty. Nobody ever seems to have their lights on, so whenever the soldier has a door open for him it's always into complete darkness. Nobody's ever in the streets except this weird little kid who's supposed to guide the soldier but keeps abandoning him. One thing that's interesting, but also frustrating, is that Robbe-Grillet never bothers to get in the heads of his characters. This is apparently because of his rejection of the "psychological novel." Thus, no names, no thoughts, everyone utterly impenetrable. Frustrating for the first half, interesting for the second.
Would I recommend it? Maybe to someone who already likes all things French. But I'm not sure I know any of those people.
It takes a good long time to figure out precisely what's going on (not that you can ever be exactly sure) and the prose (or the translation) is uninspiring. There's a lot of what seems like unnecessary description of physical objects and locations, to the exclusion of descriptions of, say, the main character. Nobody has names; physical descriptions, such as they are, seem meant to confuse. The plot consists of a soldier with a package to deliver (from whom? he doesn't know. To whom? He doesn't know. Containing what? He doesn't know.), who forgets the name of the street he's supposed to meet the recipient on. Every intersection looks the same to him. He does occasionally meet people, who rarely tell him anything useful, which raises the question: does nobody in this city have a map he could look at?
But all these annoying things pretty much have to be present for the novel to work, which it does (probably better than I'm implying here; it's just not really my thing). Those same irritating descriptions of physical objects pile up to create a tone one could describe as "proto-Lynchian," if one were so inclined. There are heavy red curtains, everything's dusty. Nobody ever seems to have their lights on, so whenever the soldier has a door open for him it's always into complete darkness. Nobody's ever in the streets except this weird little kid who's supposed to guide the soldier but keeps abandoning him. One thing that's interesting, but also frustrating, is that Robbe-Grillet never bothers to get in the heads of his characters. This is apparently because of his rejection of the "psychological novel." Thus, no names, no thoughts, everyone utterly impenetrable. Frustrating for the first half, interesting for the second.
Would I recommend it? Maybe to someone who already likes all things French. But I'm not sure I know any of those people.
December 17, 2021
Puiki maža knygutė, gerai atitinkanti besikartojančius, nežinia aplink ką besisukančius labirinto ratus. Užburianti, hipnotizuojanti, keičianti sąmonės būseną. Tarsi koks ilgai grojantis Edwardo Hopperio paveikslas.
February 21, 2019
It is a mystery with no crime and no detective. It is unsolvable. Or is it. Lucky for me the person who previously owned this copy figured it all out and wrote the five-word solution on the last page. I shall use my Ouija board to interface with the specter of Chief Inspector R-G immediately and report the findings.
December 26, 2021
Dar viena klasikų klasika, kai nesinori čia išlindinėti su savo komentarais. Čia keisčiausia, kad tikiesi iš to kultinio-programinio kūrinio, kad bus toks visai dirbtinas, techniškai novatoriškas, ir įdomus formaliai, bet neįdomus realiai. Ir nieko panašaus. Vis tiek įsijauti ir vis tiek pergyveni dėl to pagrindinio veikėjo, ir vis tiek liūdna paskui, ir vis tiek labai faina baigus skaityti, kad yra toks pasąmoninis aiškumas tik, o jokio siužetinio aiškumo nėra. Keistai malonu, kad daug galimų eigų ir pabaigų, daug spėjimų ir suvedinėjimų, ir visi negalutiniai.
Read
August 28, 2024The Difference between Reverie and Postmodern Structure
Robbe-Grillet has become difficult to read. That's because he is conventionally introduced as the leading member of the "Nouveau roman," along with Nathalie Sarraute and Michel Butor, a generation championed by Roland Barthes and others—in other words, a product of the late 1950s in France, destined to be occluded both by poststructuralists like Foucault and Derrida and by his own later work, which declined in quality.
I take all these characterizations from descriptions in reviews, including the New York Times (Rachel Donadio, Feb. 24, 2008). It may be that no other major modern writer has a later career that is so thoroughly ignored. As of 2024, the English-language Wikipedia gives a paragraph to Jealousy and The Voyeur and a line to one book published in the 1980s.
Every author speaks to us from their period, and no author I know has an even reputation for all of their work. But when those judgments are pervasive, it can be difficult not to see the text as a symptom.
Dans le labyrinthe (1959) is the last of the four novels generally said to be significant—it's the one on the precipice, even though it has also been called his most characteristic. In online descriptions, the book seems to be taken as a sort of dream narrative, because it becomes difficult to keep track of the different levels of reality. In the opening page, the weather changes abruptly and time passes oddly; in the opening section, a steel engraving, later a painting, reveals a scene in a bar that becomes real. These appear to readers to signal that the book is a dream or a meandering consciousness, exempt from form. Some writers notice that the book seems to be a story about how a story is written. (The weather changes, for example, because the author changes his mind about it.) That, too, is taken as a license for the author to wander wherever his imagination takes him. People have pointed to the book's first word, "je," and its last one, "moi" (there is no other mention of the first person in the book) as evidence that what fills the pages is in the implied author's mind, and therefore formless or improvised meditation. But is In the Labyrinth actually structureless?
(Some bookkeeping: readers have identified the person who identifies as "I" and "me" with characters in the novel, including a doctor, but the text itself speaks against that. The "I" and "me" that frame the book do not designate a person in the book. The narrative is focalized, in Genette's term, first on the soldier and then the doctor.)
Lethcoe's three levels
I think the principal attempt to find structure is an article by James Lethcoe (The French Review, February 1965). He proposes three levels of narration:
(1) "Concrete, geometrical descriptions of the room" that open the novel, described from the point of view of a person lying on the bed.
(2) "The narrator's story about the soldier who appears in the painting on the wall." This begins as an ekphrasis, but becomes an account of events that could have led to the arrangement of figures in the painting.
(3) Passages "suddenly... in the consciousnss of the soldier."
To this I would add:
(4) Passages in the second half of the book focalized on the doctor, after the soldier dies. Lethcoe reads these passages as extensions of (2), in which the narrator continues to imagine the lives of characters in the painting. Bruce Morrissette thinks the book's framing narrator (the one who is the "je" of the opening) "merges with the doctor," in an "effort finally to push the narrator himself into the story." But that effort fails, and after having experienced (3), (4) seems a distinct level. (Morrissette, "Evolution of Narratrive Viewpoint in Robbe-Grillet," Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 1967, p. 30.)
Lethcoe notes that the aspparently arbitrary and sudden nature of the shifts between these levels is actually partly logical: some leaps are made via objects that the narrator associates with different levels, and some apparent disjunctions are just the result of the narrator allowing himself to write flashbacks both "in the narrator's story and in the soldier's mind" (p. 502). Lethcoe provides a graph of the levels, which reveals some patterns (for example "a number of rapid fluctuations... corresponding to shift of levels... at the beginning," as the narrator decides on the weather and stops noting his immediate surrpundings. But the graph looks random, and doesn't reveal an overall structure, except that it begins and ends with level (0), which is the "je" and "moi," the voice of the person who writes, or recounts, the book. Lethcoe does discover that if you read only for level (2) passages, the novel is chronological, but that's not a deduction from his graph.
The meaning of the word "labyrinth"
Some scholars have explored the metaphor of the labyrinth: Ben Stolzfus notes labyrinths in Joyce, Borges, and Kafka, and says it is the product of a "descralized world" and "may be a central image of our time" ("Robbe-Grillet's Labyrinths: Structure and Meaning," Contemporary Literature, 1981, 294, 297). Morrissette, one of the North American champions of the Nouveau roman, reads the labyrinth as a way to implement:
"a new type of authorian intervention that permits, by means of an athor placed within the fictional field, the use of free modalities of narration that would be impossible in the system of existentially justified viewpoints" (p. 30).
This would make Dans le labyrinthe an unstance of "unnatural" narrative as theorized by Brian Richardson (who unaccountably leaves out Robbe-Grillet; Style, vol. 50, 2016, 385-405).
Some of these readings are inevitably true, but in this novel I think the principal direction of the metaphor is the geometric and linear form of the labyrinth: confined passages, branching unexpectedly, with no free or undefined space. Structure is everywhere: in Oulipian terms it's all constraint. "An impression of rigorous necessity" is created, in the words of one reviewer (Marc Bensimon, Books Abroad, winter 1961, 45).
The structure of the narrative
Lethcoe's levels make sense of the logical structure of the narrative, but his graph fails to reveal any further structure in the syuzhet, the way the narrative is organized. Dans le labyrinthe suggests that this particular orderly disorder may represent the feverish thoughts of a dying man (the soldier dies in a fever), and Lethcoe notes that a dying man might "attempt to fix the objects... of the room where he is dying" (p. 506), but it's a curious systematic delirium. The grammatical choices Robbe-Grillet makes, using passé composé along with past participles as modifiers, creates, according to E.T. Rahv, a temporality in which "the present mood" prevails—contributing to the lack of structure in the normal sense. (Rahv, in Modern Language review, 1971, 77.)
Lethcoe also notes moments of lucidity just before the soldier dies, and when the focalization shifts to the doctor, and I would add numerous passages in which the narrator is carefully describing objects. He finds something of "the manner of a fugue" in these moments, but there is no evidence of that. It's the other way around: delirium is rigorously excluded in the name of exact delination of visual experience, simple narratives, and levels.
For me, this is the interest of the book: the insistent and often apparently misplaced or unnecessary precision in levels and descriptions, applied to fever, delirium, and death.
Postscript
One last point about the narrative: the contents of the mysterious box that the soldier carries around are revealed, at the end, to be a collection of personal items. Several commentators online think of these as "trivial," a disappointment given that the box could have had a bomb, or human remains. A better reading is to see these as the poignant remainders of a life, inert and largely without narratives, just like the inert objects described throughout the novel—a sudden influx of affect in a cold narrative.
Robbe-Grillet has become difficult to read. That's because he is conventionally introduced as the leading member of the "Nouveau roman," along with Nathalie Sarraute and Michel Butor, a generation championed by Roland Barthes and others—in other words, a product of the late 1950s in France, destined to be occluded both by poststructuralists like Foucault and Derrida and by his own later work, which declined in quality.
I take all these characterizations from descriptions in reviews, including the New York Times (Rachel Donadio, Feb. 24, 2008). It may be that no other major modern writer has a later career that is so thoroughly ignored. As of 2024, the English-language Wikipedia gives a paragraph to Jealousy and The Voyeur and a line to one book published in the 1980s.
Every author speaks to us from their period, and no author I know has an even reputation for all of their work. But when those judgments are pervasive, it can be difficult not to see the text as a symptom.
Dans le labyrinthe (1959) is the last of the four novels generally said to be significant—it's the one on the precipice, even though it has also been called his most characteristic. In online descriptions, the book seems to be taken as a sort of dream narrative, because it becomes difficult to keep track of the different levels of reality. In the opening page, the weather changes abruptly and time passes oddly; in the opening section, a steel engraving, later a painting, reveals a scene in a bar that becomes real. These appear to readers to signal that the book is a dream or a meandering consciousness, exempt from form. Some writers notice that the book seems to be a story about how a story is written. (The weather changes, for example, because the author changes his mind about it.) That, too, is taken as a license for the author to wander wherever his imagination takes him. People have pointed to the book's first word, "je," and its last one, "moi" (there is no other mention of the first person in the book) as evidence that what fills the pages is in the implied author's mind, and therefore formless or improvised meditation. But is In the Labyrinth actually structureless?
(Some bookkeeping: readers have identified the person who identifies as "I" and "me" with characters in the novel, including a doctor, but the text itself speaks against that. The "I" and "me" that frame the book do not designate a person in the book. The narrative is focalized, in Genette's term, first on the soldier and then the doctor.)
Lethcoe's three levels
I think the principal attempt to find structure is an article by James Lethcoe (The French Review, February 1965). He proposes three levels of narration:
(1) "Concrete, geometrical descriptions of the room" that open the novel, described from the point of view of a person lying on the bed.
(2) "The narrator's story about the soldier who appears in the painting on the wall." This begins as an ekphrasis, but becomes an account of events that could have led to the arrangement of figures in the painting.
(3) Passages "suddenly... in the consciousnss of the soldier."
To this I would add:
(4) Passages in the second half of the book focalized on the doctor, after the soldier dies. Lethcoe reads these passages as extensions of (2), in which the narrator continues to imagine the lives of characters in the painting. Bruce Morrissette thinks the book's framing narrator (the one who is the "je" of the opening) "merges with the doctor," in an "effort finally to push the narrator himself into the story." But that effort fails, and after having experienced (3), (4) seems a distinct level. (Morrissette, "Evolution of Narratrive Viewpoint in Robbe-Grillet," Novel: A Forum on Fiction, 1967, p. 30.)
Lethcoe notes that the aspparently arbitrary and sudden nature of the shifts between these levels is actually partly logical: some leaps are made via objects that the narrator associates with different levels, and some apparent disjunctions are just the result of the narrator allowing himself to write flashbacks both "in the narrator's story and in the soldier's mind" (p. 502). Lethcoe provides a graph of the levels, which reveals some patterns (for example "a number of rapid fluctuations... corresponding to shift of levels... at the beginning," as the narrator decides on the weather and stops noting his immediate surrpundings. But the graph looks random, and doesn't reveal an overall structure, except that it begins and ends with level (0), which is the "je" and "moi," the voice of the person who writes, or recounts, the book. Lethcoe does discover that if you read only for level (2) passages, the novel is chronological, but that's not a deduction from his graph.
The meaning of the word "labyrinth"
Some scholars have explored the metaphor of the labyrinth: Ben Stolzfus notes labyrinths in Joyce, Borges, and Kafka, and says it is the product of a "descralized world" and "may be a central image of our time" ("Robbe-Grillet's Labyrinths: Structure and Meaning," Contemporary Literature, 1981, 294, 297). Morrissette, one of the North American champions of the Nouveau roman, reads the labyrinth as a way to implement:
"a new type of authorian intervention that permits, by means of an athor placed within the fictional field, the use of free modalities of narration that would be impossible in the system of existentially justified viewpoints" (p. 30).
This would make Dans le labyrinthe an unstance of "unnatural" narrative as theorized by Brian Richardson (who unaccountably leaves out Robbe-Grillet; Style, vol. 50, 2016, 385-405).
Some of these readings are inevitably true, but in this novel I think the principal direction of the metaphor is the geometric and linear form of the labyrinth: confined passages, branching unexpectedly, with no free or undefined space. Structure is everywhere: in Oulipian terms it's all constraint. "An impression of rigorous necessity" is created, in the words of one reviewer (Marc Bensimon, Books Abroad, winter 1961, 45).
The structure of the narrative
Lethcoe's levels make sense of the logical structure of the narrative, but his graph fails to reveal any further structure in the syuzhet, the way the narrative is organized. Dans le labyrinthe suggests that this particular orderly disorder may represent the feverish thoughts of a dying man (the soldier dies in a fever), and Lethcoe notes that a dying man might "attempt to fix the objects... of the room where he is dying" (p. 506), but it's a curious systematic delirium. The grammatical choices Robbe-Grillet makes, using passé composé along with past participles as modifiers, creates, according to E.T. Rahv, a temporality in which "the present mood" prevails—contributing to the lack of structure in the normal sense. (Rahv, in Modern Language review, 1971, 77.)
Lethcoe also notes moments of lucidity just before the soldier dies, and when the focalization shifts to the doctor, and I would add numerous passages in which the narrator is carefully describing objects. He finds something of "the manner of a fugue" in these moments, but there is no evidence of that. It's the other way around: delirium is rigorously excluded in the name of exact delination of visual experience, simple narratives, and levels.
For me, this is the interest of the book: the insistent and often apparently misplaced or unnecessary precision in levels and descriptions, applied to fever, delirium, and death.
Postscript
One last point about the narrative: the contents of the mysterious box that the soldier carries around are revealed, at the end, to be a collection of personal items. Several commentators online think of these as "trivial," a disappointment given that the box could have had a bomb, or human remains. A better reading is to see these as the poignant remainders of a life, inert and largely without narratives, just like the inert objects described throughout the novel—a sudden influx of affect in a cold narrative.
September 6, 2021
Along with "Jealousy," one of Robbe-Grillet's finest novels. An elegant labyrinth that's both an enactment of how stories are composed and an oddly moving tale of a soldier trying to deliver a package in a war-torn city before it's overrun by enemy troops. Slow to unfold - I started it 3X before it finally caught me - but worth the effort.
November 29, 2025
A soldier wanders the deserted streets of an unknown town hoping to deliver a mysterious box of items to someone unknown.
All is uncertain in this hallucinatory story. Events recur with slight variations and seems to be inspired by a drawing of a cafe scene.
The snow that falls in the streets is a good metaphor for the narrative, covering up any tracks as soon as they are created
All is uncertain in this hallucinatory story. Events recur with slight variations and seems to be inspired by a drawing of a cafe scene.
The snow that falls in the streets is a good metaphor for the narrative, covering up any tracks as soon as they are created
September 1, 2019
روایت خوب و ترجمهی بد. تازه اولشم کلی تعریف کرده از ترجمهی خودش.
July 7, 2019
прочитав лише тому, що спокусився назвою, але читво аж надто не моє, американці мені миліші :) Роб-Ґріє, як і більшість митців до нього, доводить, що вихід із лабіринту - це вихід із життя, а кінець гри - це просто кінець. солдат, що невідь-куди несе (без)цінний пакунок, промовистий символ письменства, що носиться з ідеями як з писаними торбами, але вони нікому не потрібні, бо в пакунку - надто особисте, яке не цікавить загал. старі письменники не хотіли розважати, тому їх не читають.
November 11, 2019
خيابانهاي خلوت شبيه به هم اي را تصور كنيد كه زير بارش دانه هاي برف سفيد پوش شده است. پنجره خانه هايي شبيه به هم با چراغ هاي خاموش و پرده هاي كشيده شده،
مردي با لباس سربازي و بسته اي به زير بغل در اين خيابانها در حال گذر است. عبور چند باره از خيابان هاي تكراري در جستجوي جايي و كسي كه نام شان را نمي داند. سرگردان در يك هزار تو، آيا اين نوشته داستان اين كتاب است؟
اشتباه نكنيد اين سرباز يكي از تصاوير تابلوي روي ديواري است كه ما را به درون خود كشيده، نويسنده در حين توصيف اجزاي تابلو ناگهان ما را به درون كشيده و با تصاوير همراه ميكند، حتي به كرات خود را دريك تابلو و يا عكسي ديگر ميابيم، از شروع يك پاراگراف تا پايان آن سفري در زمان و مكان داريم.
در اين كتاب داستاني وجود ندارد و پر از تصاويري است كه شايد هر روز با آن مواجه هستيم، نويسنده ي توانا ما را با خود در لابيرنتي بي صدا در خيابانهايي خلوتي همراه كرده كه در انتظار هجوم سرباز هاي دشمن هستند.
در اين كتاب داستاني وجود ندارد و سراسر سرگشتگي است.
شبيه زندگي خود ما و شبيه سرگرداني خود ما در زمان و مكان حقيقي و خيالي مان و زر انتظار دشمنان حقيقي و خيالي مان.
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پ ن: اين اثر از آلن روب گريه، نويسنده ي فرانسوي، يك رمان نو است كه از سنت هاي پيشين رمان نويسي پيروي نمي كند.
آلن رب گری یه میگوید: رمان نو ، در بدترین معنای خود ، باز هم نهضتی است در بدعت. خصوصیت نهضت بدعت ها این است که به تدریج از بین می روند تا پیوسته جای خود را به بدعت دیگر بدهند.
January 10, 2025
خوندنش حوصله میخواد نه این کتاب بلکه اکثر کارهای آلن روب-گرییه اینطوریه. کتاب شما رو پشت یه دوربین سینمایی قرار میده که به تمام جزئیات و ظواهر و بیرون آدم ها میپردازه و به ندرت به درون شخصیت های این کتاب رخنه میکنه. اسمی از هیچکس نیست مثل اینکه واقعاً تو داری تو خیابونا قدم میزنی و از کنار آدمهای رد میشوی که اسمشان را نمیدانی ...
قبلا که شاهد رو خونده بودم خوندنش برام سخت بود و بعد یخ هفته تونستم تموم کنم اما این یکی نمیدونم بخاطر عادت کردن به قلمش بود یا که واقعاً برام جذاب بود که قراره چه اتفاقی اخر کتاب بیفته.
قبلا که شاهد رو خونده بودم خوندنش برام سخت بود و بعد یخ هفته تونستم تموم کنم اما این یکی نمیدونم بخاطر عادت کردن به قلمش بود یا که واقعاً برام جذاب بود که قراره چه اتفاقی اخر کتاب بیفته.
January 29, 2025
"В лабіринті" - химерна подорож крізь туман реальності та ілюзії. Автор змушує читача зануритися у світ, де час і простір розчиняються і все відчувається ніби у лихоманці. Історія солдата, що блукає містом під снігопадом, стає монотонною, гіпнотичною мозаїкою повторів і деталей, наче лабіринт з якого ніяк не вдається вийти. Надзвичайний, неповторний досвід.
February 27, 2015
I don't blame anyone for disliking this book. There are a lot of things reasonably expectable from novels and stories in general; most of those things seem to be or actually are missing.
So why did i care enough to read the whole book? What entertained me? I know that nothing within the three intro essays felt applicable to my reading experience. Did i like the book, though? "No ... Yes ... Maybe" is what i'd attempted to utter when i was the motionless ARG character inside me. But i think i was am merely the a narrator. Fitting the pieces of narrative and description together within me, as i encountered them, satisfied me. In a stretchy synaptic tingling kind of way.
Though Robbe-Grillet ain't evil for having an alien mind or a concept of The Novel that challenges mine, if there's a war to determine the fate of The Novel, i wouldn't be able to knowingly kill him and i wouldn't want to fight beside him in the trenches either.
A simplistic plot(less) summary. Events are told and things are described. Most everything involves a soldier carrying a box. He jumpcuts from nexus to nexus within a city with plenty of buildings but without landmarks. Streets are identical. This must be shown on a screen. Animated. Like with crayons. No. Or stop motion photography. Cards with the dialog written. Not many cards. It will be easy for me because there are no people moving about the streets with the soldier. A boy with a cape. A man with a fur-lined coat and an umbrella. One at a time with the soldier. I can draw that. But the many soldiers. And in the café. It's an etching, the eye ingests the patrons, bartender, and waitress within one. All sleeping within one army barracks hospital room. A sort of family unit inside one residential one-room residence. The soldier might be injured, sick, or simply unable to experience time. Normally. Or at all. No. I'm thinking of the narrator. It's snowing and he has a sallow complexion with a certain amount of days' beard growth. Or rain. Silent snowfall, even vocalizations, called speech, might not be auditory. It's all his thoughts. The tree falls inside a skull. I can tell you that. No one hears a thing. Read images of vision. I stopped summarizing some time ago.
So why did i care enough to read the whole book? What entertained me? I know that nothing within the three intro essays felt applicable to my reading experience. Did i like the book, though? "No ... Yes ... Maybe" is what i'd attempted to utter when i was the motionless ARG character inside me. But i think i was am merely the a narrator. Fitting the pieces of narrative and description together within me, as i encountered them, satisfied me. In a stretchy synaptic tingling kind of way.
Though Robbe-Grillet ain't evil for having an alien mind or a concept of The Novel that challenges mine, if there's a war to determine the fate of The Novel, i wouldn't be able to knowingly kill him and i wouldn't want to fight beside him in the trenches either.
September 25, 2018
Para entrar en el laberinto que traza Robbe- Grillet hay que olvidarse de la fórmula que nos enseñaron en la escuela sobre las partes constitutivas de un libro: introducción, nudo y desenlace. Puede que sirva para la mayoría de las novelas, pero en esta no. Y cuesta un poco despegarse de ella, mucho más si uno viene leyendo libros que la respetan al pie de la letra.
De todos modos, se puede recolectar un argumento que sufre variaciones y es, por lo tanto, bastante fragmentario. Hay un soldado, hay un paquete, hay una calle que encontrar. Y también hay (y eso es lo “nuevo”, lo que extraña al lector) una acumulación de descripciones de objetos sin sentido. O tal vez lo tengan. En el laberinto marea, rompe esquemas, cambia de escenarios abruptamente, de voces, oculta todo lo que uno quiere descubrir mientras lee. Puede llegar a ser frustrante muchas veces.
Me enteré de que Robbe- Grillet se inscribe en la lista de autores que ya no usan las locaciones, los muebles y las cosas en general como un relleno de la novela que se mimetiza con los personajes, como sucede en Balzac. Los objetos están ahí (no lo digo yo, lo dice él en Por una novela nueva ) porque el hombre los creó y piensa en ellos todo el tiempo. Se puede estar de acuerdo o no, pero tiene su lógica y es para tener en cuenta.
Personalmente, me encantó. No me cruzo habitualmente con libros como estos y me dieron ganas de que fuera diferente. Por lo pronto, sé que quiero leer En el laberinto otra vez… y fijarme si puedo salir de él con más facilidad.
De todos modos, se puede recolectar un argumento que sufre variaciones y es, por lo tanto, bastante fragmentario. Hay un soldado, hay un paquete, hay una calle que encontrar. Y también hay (y eso es lo “nuevo”, lo que extraña al lector) una acumulación de descripciones de objetos sin sentido. O tal vez lo tengan. En el laberinto marea, rompe esquemas, cambia de escenarios abruptamente, de voces, oculta todo lo que uno quiere descubrir mientras lee. Puede llegar a ser frustrante muchas veces.
Me enteré de que Robbe- Grillet se inscribe en la lista de autores que ya no usan las locaciones, los muebles y las cosas en general como un relleno de la novela que se mimetiza con los personajes, como sucede en Balzac. Los objetos están ahí (no lo digo yo, lo dice él en Por una novela nueva ) porque el hombre los creó y piensa en ellos todo el tiempo. Se puede estar de acuerdo o no, pero tiene su lógica y es para tener en cuenta.
Personalmente, me encantó. No me cruzo habitualmente con libros como estos y me dieron ganas de que fuera diferente. Por lo pronto, sé que quiero leer En el laberinto otra vez… y fijarme si puedo salir de él con más facilidad.
October 31, 2011
En el laberinto tiene traducción al español por M.A. Asturias y, consecuentemente, posee una sonoridad y un control rítmico exquisitos en nuestra misma lengua —privilegio al que pocas veces accedemos en textos traducidos. Sin embargo, el fuerte del libro no está allí.
Robbe-Grillet maneja una técnica difícilmente comprable: los juegos de repeticiones en los que introduce —o no— cambios dentro de la estructura mayor de la novela recuerda un rondó sonata. A su vez, la posición del narrador le permite confundir planos y realidades con soltura envidiable.
Las imágenes, por su lado, solo son comparables a la película de Resnais con guión del mismo Robbe-Grillet; y si a esto se le suma la originalidad de la historia en un mundo que poco o nada tiene que envidiar al borgiano se tendrá que acordar que En el laberinto es una obra maestra de lectura obligada.
Robbe-Grillet maneja una técnica difícilmente comprable: los juegos de repeticiones en los que introduce —o no— cambios dentro de la estructura mayor de la novela recuerda un rondó sonata. A su vez, la posición del narrador le permite confundir planos y realidades con soltura envidiable.
Las imágenes, por su lado, solo son comparables a la película de Resnais con guión del mismo Robbe-Grillet; y si a esto se le suma la originalidad de la historia en un mundo que poco o nada tiene que envidiar al borgiano se tendrá que acordar que En el laberinto es una obra maestra de lectura obligada.
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September 9, 2016بارزترین اتفاق این رمان ، توجه نویسنده به جزئیات است.چیزی که دقت و حوصله ی پر رنگ مخاطب را می طلبد .خاننده ای که می بایست تا به سرانجام رسیدن مأموریت ، پا به پای سرباز ِ نقش اول داستان درهزارتوی شهر،کوچه ها ،خانه ها،کافه و...راه بیاُفتد و همراه باشد.در این اثر با نامها جز در یک مورد ،سر و کار نداریم،دیالوگها بسیار کوتاه است ،با جمله های به یادماندنی برخورد نمی کنیم در بیشتر موارد درگیر نگاه کردن به توصیفات نویسنده از اشیاء و فضاها،حرکت و تکرار هستیم ،
میشود گفت «در هزارتو» از آن جنس آثاریست که که انگار حرف خاصی برای گفتن ندارد و در عین حال از پتانسیل بالایی برای نقد و بررسی از زوایای گوناگون برخوردار است.
در پایان توصیه می کنم اگر حوصله ی داستانی با ریتم یکنواخت و بدون هیجان را ندارید،به این کتاب نزدیک نشوید!
میشود گفت «در هزارتو» از آن جنس آثاریست که که انگار حرف خاصی برای گفتن ندارد و در عین حال از پتانسیل بالایی برای نقد و بررسی از زوایای گوناگون برخوردار است.
در پایان توصیه می کنم اگر حوصله ی داستانی با ریتم یکنواخت و بدون هیجان را ندارید،به این کتاب نزدیک نشوید!
September 29, 2018
جانم را گرفت تا به انتها رسید. کسل کننده بود و کند. کتمان نمیکنم که مهارت بسیاری در توصیفات به کار بسته شده بود و شباهتها کلافگی سردرگمی در یک هزارتو را به خوبی القا میکردند و البته کتمان نمیکنم که صفحات آخر، همچون آخرین صفحات ژلوزی شاید، اندکی بر جذابیت اثر افزودهاند اما در نهایت این اثری نبود که بپسندم و دوستش داشته باشم. به قول فرهنگیها، از نوع من نبود.
هنوز بهترین اثر روب گرییه به گمانم شاهد است.
هنوز بهترین اثر روب گرییه به گمانم شاهد است.
October 17, 2014
دستی در هوا مانده, دهانی باز مانده, سری یک وری مانده, اما تنش جای حرکت را گرفته چهره ها کج و معوج شده, دست و پاها خشک شده, لبخند بدل شده به شکلک, هوس ها قصد و معنایشان را از دست داده اند. به جای شان, دیگر چیزی باقی نیست, هیچ چیز جز افراط, و غرابت, و مرگ
March 27, 2017
کتاب بشدت توصیفیه
توصیف مکان با جزئیات زیاد، اصلا درگیر شخصیتها نیست، بیشتر خط سیر اونها رو دنبال میکنه و خیلی شکسته و درهم زمان و مکان رو قاطی میکنه بطوری که آخر کتاب میتونید دید کلی از اونچه رخ داد رو داشته باشید
به مذاق من خوش نیامد!
توصیف مکان با جزئیات زیاد، اصلا درگیر شخصیتها نیست، بیشتر خط سیر اونها رو دنبال میکنه و خیلی شکسته و درهم زمان و مکان رو قاطی میکنه بطوری که آخر کتاب میتونید دید کلی از اونچه رخ داد رو داشته باشید
به مذاق من خوش نیامد!
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September 6, 2015Read this ages ago. Don't remember much about it, except that it was very haunting.
February 12, 2018
Чомусь весь час прочитання перед очима вспливали образи якоїсь дичайшої радянської анімації типу цієї дичі, бо і сюжет нам передається статичними кадрами, візуальними образами, які буває боляче сприймати через грубе поводження автора зі словами. Але прочитав я цю книжку від сили за дві години, і післясмак вона лишила гіркаво-прекрасний.
Стиль написання аж невиносно описовий,через що заблукати у тексті, наче в тому лабіринті, надлегко. Гарячковість та сплутаність свідомості оповіді лише посилює ефект.
Ніколи не став би шукати нічого схожого.
Стиль написання аж невиносно описовий,через що заблукати у тексті, наче в тому лабіринті, надлегко. Гарячковість та сплутаність свідомості оповіді лише посилює ефект.
Ніколи не став би шукати нічого схожого.
June 2, 2018
A strange experimental read that feels like a half-forgotten memory. You wander down the same streets, pass the same houses, in search of a meeting spot you cannot remember the name of for a purpose you can no longer recall. The snow falls, doors creak open and lights are turned out. A challenge in the beginning, but well worth the read.
September 20, 2023
Was not loving it. I like the lack of metaphors and the lack of use of the narrator’s viewpoint in his descriptions. But I don’t need pages upon pages of extremely intricate detail on the smallest things.
July 3, 2024
I enjoyed this quite abit, it's different and a fresh way of looking at how story's can be told, I would hold off on calling this great though.
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